In any medium that isn't music, stories often involve negative behaviors to entertain the viewer. Negative behaviors in this context will be
a focus on things such as violence, tragedy, mocking, one-sided conflicts, dark lighting, complexity in the form of character flaws and criminals
and exaggerated criminal justice.
People who vocally avoid negative themes being central to what they produce in entertainment are likely to be called unrealistic or idealistic
if their intention is to inform reality. But the truth of the matter is that fiction is one of the biggest informers of behavior in modern life.
If there are no strong parental figures in a child's life, they are most likely to form themselves secretly or not so secretly around entertainment.
People who use "common sense" or other careless stances in situations are often going to be drawing from movies and other pieces of fiction while
telling themselves that they learned this from society. People are indeed flawed, but it is largely because we are encouraged to live in a fast-paced
world and to engage in non-constructive behaviors when we socialize.
When society is so hinged upon just getting things and just fitting in while also being highly isolating and secretive due to phones and Internet,
it appears to me as a system meant to fail and have people fall through the cracks. Socially, people have not formed an appropriate culture and this
has caused the rise of people who treat important things as jokes and who blindly follow fascist movements that only exist to harm or exploit human
lives. People will blame the government, but even in the era of Donald Trump or Boris Johnson, I believe the culture created within families, friends
and pieces of entertainment are to blame for many of society's ills.
Finally onto the main point - creating works of fiction centered around positive and constructive behaviors is vital. Many of us may not even be
able to imagine how a story constructed around positive themes would look like as the primary form of storytelling for most of world history has been to
focus on conflicts and misfortunes that eventually are overcome. The problem with much of our storytelling is that we focus on an individual versus the
world or trusting that everyone can handle the dark or difficult tasks placed upon them. Our media creates pictures of perfection and people believe
them to be the primary way of existing. Those less than heroic characters that are thrown in as a joke or an enemy are often depicted so lightly as to
make their lives seem insupportable by society. Many of these negative oriented stories focus so much on the limits of human ability that they all are
essentially thriller films postured as if they were the crux of reality.
How can highly positive and constructive storytelling be done??? While we have things like Animal Crossing and documentaries about the progress
of society, such examples are quite limited in their stories and can not sustainably encourage people on how to improve their lives most of the time.
Others pieces of fiction that do give us something valuable will most likely be a resolution to a story arc in a largely negatively themed story.
Ideally, the fiction that would fulfill my belief in what fiction should become can indeed show a very idealistic outlook compared to other things,
but also ensure there is realistic depth to it. For example, maybe we have a story where a person does not know what direction to go in life. Instead
of making the character go through a bunch of random events, they will have parents, guardians or friends that guide them on a journey through different
experiences and pieces of information regarding careers and lifestyles, giving them a taste of different worlds they could live in. The story would
ensure that these experiences are true to life and characters can even explain how they are being affected by an experience with higher awareness than a
person at that stage of maturity may typically have, just to ensure the meaning of the situation is given. I believe a story like this would help many
people in a much more concrete way than the usual highly praised stories about people fighting against all odds and protecting those who are vulnerable
from the world, et cetera.